Ogden Nash
Date of Birth | : | 19 Aug, 1902 |
Date of Death | : | 19 May, 1971 |
Place of Birth | : | Rye, New York, United States |
Profession | : | Poet |
Nationality | : | American |
Frederic Ogden Nash was an American poet well known for his light verse, of which he wrote over 500 pieces. With his unconventional rhyming schemes, he was declared by The New York Times the country's best-known producer of humorous poetry.
Biography
After a year at Harvard University (1920–21), Nash held a variety of jobs—advertising, teaching, editing, bond selling—before the success of his poetry enabled him to work full-time at it. He sold his first verse (1930) to The New Yorker, on whose editorial staff he was employed for a time. With the publication of his first collection, Hard Lines (1931), he began a 40-year career during which he produced 20 volumes of verse with such titles as The Bad Parents’ Garden of Verse (1936), I’m a Stranger Here Myself (1938), and Everyone but Thee and Me (1962). Making his home in Baltimore, he also did considerable lecturing on tours throughout the United States. He wrote the lyrics for the musicals One Touch of Venus (1943) and Two’s Company (1952), as well as several children’s books.
His rhymes are jarringly off or disconcertingly exact, and his ragged stanzas vary from lines of one word to lines that meander the length of a paragraph, often interrupted by inapposite digressions. He said he learned his prosody from the unintentional blunders of the notoriously slipshod poet Julia Moore, the “Sweet Singer of Michigan.”
Quotes
Whenever you're wrong, admit it; Whenever you're right, shut up.
Middle-age is when you're sitting at home on a Saturday night and the telephone rings and you hope it isn't for you.
Humor is the best means of surviving in a difficult world.
Some tortures are physical And some are mental, But the one that is both Is dental.
The door of a bigoted mind opens outwards so that the only result of the pressure of facts upon it is to close it more snugly.
I do not like to get the news, because there has never been an era when so many things were going so right for so many of the wrong persons.
God in His wisdom made the fly And then forgot to tell us why.
Some primal termite knocked on wood. And tasted it, and found it good. And that is why your Cousin May Fell through the parlor floor today.
I am a conscientious man, when I throw rocks at seabirds I leave no tern unstoned.
Here's a good rule of thumb; too clever is dumb.